Tell Me to Breathe
by Vanillasiren
Summary: Upon learning she has cancer and witnessing Sam and Ric's betrayal, Alexis turns to the one person who's always been there for her, even in death.


Tell Me to Breathe

*Author's Note: Although others are mentioned, I'd classify this as a Stefan and Alexis fic. This is set some time after Alexis learns she has cancer (and sees Ric having sex with Sam, ugh!) but before she tells anyone in her family about her disease. Also, please note that underlined text indicates actual GH quotes, which I am using in my own context. Hope you like it! *

_Breathe._

They'd all said it to her at one point or another – in the midst of her babbling rants, her flustered tirades, her excessive denials of being nervous or upset or turned on.

_Honey, breathe,_ Ned had said, stroking her hair. Kind, dependable, reliable Ned. Her fellow "gatekeeper," her kindred spirit, the first man she had ever told that she loved, outside of her family members. Her soft place to land after she had been banished from that family by the one she loved most. Ned was the one she had run to, and then run from, quite literally leaving him standing at the altar. It would have been comical, if she had not hurt him so badly in the end.

"_Marriage to Ned Ashton is absurd__,"_ he'd said to her. Apparently, he had been right.

"_Breathe, Alexis"_ Sonny said, flashing his dimples, his charm on full display, paying no attention when she snapped at him. He _liked_ to see her flustered. He liked to tease her, liked to dance with her, dance around her, drilling relentlessly at the desire beneath the solid foundation of their friendship. He did not understand that he would cause the entire structure of their relationship to collapse. Either that, or he simply didn't care.

In Sonny, she saw darkness, but it hardly bothered her; she was a Cassadine. She had lived her whole childhood surrounded by dark, dangerous men, one of whom she'd loved above all. This darkness is Sonny was not the same kind, but still, she could recognize it. To her, he was both thrilling and familiar at the same time. And of course, whatever passion they had was doomed from the start. But she couldn't regret it entirely, because their time together gave her Kristina, her daughter.

"_I can't believe you dreamed Sonny Corinthos rescued you__" _he'd said to her. It was just a dream, she'd told him. But he knew better, because he knew her better than anyone.

"_Breathe, baby,"_ Ric whispered, pulling her in for a kiss. Ric. He was as complex and as dark as Sonny, and, in his way, as reliable and dependable as Ned. After all they went through together, she thought she had finally found her true match in him. It seemed fortunate that their marriage had started out as one of convenience; if it had been the sort of official, formal affair she's almost completed with Ned, she probably would've have run away again. But it became real, became love, and that love became manifest in the birth of their daughter, Molly. It seemed she had finally achieved what she had thought impossible: a loving marriage, and children.

And then she saw Ric having sex with her oldest daughter. And everything was in ruins.

"_Don't think on it. Trying to find her will only bring pain to you both," _he had said. Aside from Mikkos, he was the only one who knew about the baby she gave up for adoption, the one that would grow up to be Sam McCall. And he was the only one who knew … but she pushed that out of her mind. _Don't think on it._ He was right. Some things were just too painful to recall.

Ned, Sonny, Ric - her lovers, such as they were, reassuring her, calming her, soothing her, telling her to breathe. But in the end, none of their words had really mattered. Only one person had told her to breathe when she _literally_ needed to. He had _ordered_ her to breathe, to survive, to endure, to live. And she had listened.

She was 16, and she had laughed at Stavros Cassadine. For that, she had almost died.

_She was "home" from boarding school for the summer, on the Cassadine island. She doesn't remember exactly what he did that made her laugh – all she remembers is Stavros glaring down at her as the laughter died in her throat. She remembers wanting to run, but freezing in terror as he approached and struck her, sending her reeling. Then instinct overrode the numbing fear, and she ran. _

"_Get back here, you worthless little slut! I'll teach you to laugh at me!"_ _He was bigger and faster than her, and soon he was on her, slamming her against the wall as his fingers closed around her throat. The laughter in her had died, but he intended to kill its source, she realized in terror. He had hurt her before, but she had never seen murder in his eyes until now. She sputtered and flailed, bringing her arms down ineffectually on him, trying to get him to release his stranglehold. Just before her vision faded to black, she saw a familiar, beloved figure, shouting "Stavros, stop!" and she felt him pulling the monster away._

"_Breathe, honey,"_ Ned said.

"_Breathe, Alexis," _Sonny said.

"_Breathe, baby," _Ric said.

"_Breathe!" _Stefan cried_, "Breathe, little one, breathe! Don't leave me, I love you, I need you! I forbid – I _forbid_ you to die, Alexis! Breathe! Breathe!"_

_And she did. She always did as she said, and this time, it saved her life. She coughed and gasped and came back to consciousness. She saw Stavros, lying unconscious on the floor, bleeding. His nose seemed to be broken. She hugged Stefan and clung him, and they cried with relief in each other arms._

"_Does is still hurt?" He asked softly, days later, looking with pain at the finger-shaped bruises on her throat._

_Tears fell down her cheeks, faster than he could wipe away, as she whispered hoarsely, "It only hurts when I breathe."_

And it hurt when she breathed now. That hacking cough she had, the one that didn't seem to go away, had turned out be a symptom of lung cancer. There was a sort of morbid symmetry to it all.

And after all these years, after how horrible things had been between them in the end – his betrayal, her betrayal - after she saw him swallowed and destroyed but his own darkness – here she was. The first person she was telling about her disease was Stefan, who was dead. All these years, she'd been bearing the silent grief of his loss, thinking about him more often than anyone would have known. Even so, she had thought she could finally live without him – he who had been mother and father and sister and brother and all she ever needed to know of family.

Well, she could _almost_ live without him. But not quite.

"I really wish you were here, Stefan, because I don't know how to survive this without you."

But she had to, for her little girls. And if she concentrated hard enough, closed her eyes and suspended her disbelief, thought of his love, thought of his spirit, thought of un-breaking everything between them that had been broken, she could, just for an instant, believe she heard his voice inside her head.

"_Breathe, little one. Live, little one. I _forbid _you to die."_

Later, there would be more tests. There would be a medically induced coma. There would be surgery, and radiation, and chemo. Ric and Sam's betrayal would be out in the open, and the shambles of her marriage would finally implode. But eventually, she would go into remission.

She knew it was foolish. She would not admit it, even to herself, but somehow, somewhere deep inside, she believed it was because she had heard his voice, for the last time, telling her to breathe.


End file.
